Rockstar Games was “half done” with development of the GTA V single-player DLC, titled Agent Trevor, before it was canceled.
During a recent interview with Lex Fridman, Rockstar Games co-founder Dan Houser confirmed long-standing rumors that a single-player DLC for GTA V, focused on Trevor Philips as a secret agent, was already “about half done” before it was canceled.
“The internet knows we made a single-player DLC for GTA V that never came out,” Houser said. “It was one where you played as Trevor, but he was a secret agent. It was cute. It never quite came together, and it was never finished. It was about half done when it got abandoned.”
Houser reflected on the decision to shelve the project, acknowledging the difficult trade-offs behind it. “If that had come out, [we] probably wouldn’t have gotten to make Red Dead [Redemption] 2. So, there’s always compromises,” he admitted. Despite its cancellation, Houser said the idea of expanding stories beyond the base game has always appealed to him. “I like making the stories. For me, I love the model of GTA IV when you had the extra stories coming afterwards or Red Dead 1 when you had the zombie pack coming afterwards. I like just doing these extra things. So, I would’ve personally liked to have done more of that in that company.”
Houser went on to express his liking for narrative expansions and his disappointment with the game industry’s focus having shifted toward online monetization. “I like single-player DLC. I just think the audience loves it, and it’s really fun to make,” he said. “We still love single-player games. And I think as we started up Absurd [Ventures], we did a lot of soul searching. Luckily, if you want to do what we’re forced to do and also what I want to do, which is make new IP, you need single-player games.”
Houser’s comments also touched on his upcoming work at Absurd Ventures, confirming that his new studio is “really leaning into single-player experience as being a strength for us as a company, and something we love to do.”
